Trio involved in Rs 50 crore call centre con held in Delhi

NEW DELHI: If it was the lure of impossibly high returns and Bollywood roles that helped 'stockguru' couple Ulhas Khare and Raksha Urs pull off a Rs 1,100 crore scam, a trio conned more than 150 people in the city of Rs 50 crore on the pretext of setting up call centres that never came up.

The three — brothers Sandeep and Manoj Shukla and their friend Surendra Batho — were arrested on Thursday night while trying to flee the city. Sandeep, police said, owns a production company, Leo 1, and is a known face in Bollywood. He had recently produced the second season of the popular TV show, Dance India Dance, and was planning to make a film with a comic hero.

"The accused had cheated investors in Mumbai. Three cases were registered against Shukla, Manoj and others for fraud to the tune of Rs 40 crore, with the Economic Offence Wing of Mumbai police," DCP northwest P Karunakaran said. Batho is a resident of Thane in Maharashtra, while the brothers belong to Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh.

Woman investor first tipped police about con artistes

"The accused had floated the company Max Star Infotech Private Limited and had entered into a partnership with Bhartico Infomedia in 2010. Sandeep had earlier floated companies in the name of Aurum Reality, Bristol Developers and Yescube Infrastructure Pvt Ltd in Mumbai and cheated hundreds of investors," Karunakaran said.

Investigations against the trio began in Delhi when a woman complained earlier this year that a man named Veer Singh Thakur (Sandeep) induced her to invest in two of his companies for procuring call centre franchises. On their directions, she initially invested Rs 3.75 lakh and Rs 16.08 lakh through cheques and was told that she could choose the location while the companies would provide the infrastructure. In the next few months, she ended up investing around Rs 22 lakh.

The woman said an agreement was to be drawn up and around Rs 11 lakh of the invested money returned to her once the call centres were set up, but it never happened. "During the course of the investigation, we came to know that around 155 people were cheated by the employees of these companies using similar modus operandi," he added.

A special team of officials was set up under the overall supervision of ACP (operations) Aas Mohammed, who conducted raids at various places to nab the accused. Finally, on the basis of a tip-off, the trio were arrested in northwest Delhi when they were trying to escape in a Honda City car. About Rs 40 lakh in cash and jewellery worth Rs 2 lakh was recovered from them.

"During interrogation, Sandeep Shukla alias Veer Singh disclosed that he had cheated a number of people in Mumbai and then came to Delhi to continue the con job. He stayed in rented accommodations in Gurgaon and Delhi. The glamour of Bollywood pulled him soon and he got into organizing events involving celebrities. Their passports and PAN cards are being verified," Karunakaran said.